Top Gun 2 And Why People Still Matter

Jerry Bruckheimer, producer extraordinaire and the man behind the original Top Gun, is looking to make a sequel to the 1986 blockbuster. Of course, the movie will again revolve around the original film’s star, Tom Cruise.

So what will be the plot of Top Gun 2?

“The concept is, basically, are the pilots obsolete because of drones,” Bruckheimer recently told The Huffington Post. “Cruise is going to show them that they’re not obsolete. They’re here to stay.”

That’s certainly not a new concept, as movies like The Terminator and I, Robot and dozens of others have brushed on it before: will there, sometime in the near future, be a time when man will essentially be replaced by machine?

Maybe, someday, and some jobs already have been. But all this focus on technology has made something that should be blindly obvious less and less clear: it isn’t machines that make organizations, it is people.

It isn’t machines who set strategies, it is people. It isn’t machines who think of the next great idea, it is people. It isn’t machines who have the passion and desire to turn a concept into a booming business that employs hundreds of people, it is people.

The point with all this is that there seems to be a focus today on getting the best technology to win as an organization. But the fact of the matter is the real way to win is the same way to win 100 years ago or 1,000 years ago: by getting the best people.

So we look forward to the release of Top Gun 2. And we’ll be rooting for Tom.

Thanks, Paul. Finding great people is EASY. Getting them to listen to you about your crappy job with a has-been/ also-ran/wannabe company that has nothing else to offer except deluded marketing-hype is HARD.